The Tuesday Portrait: Ray Hudson

“O what am I that I should not seem / For the song’s sake a fool?” —Yeats

It’s impossible to separate Ray Hudson’s appeal as a sportscaster from his appeal as an object of mockery. But because even most of the people who mock him basically like him, no one ever quite acknowledges this, and a strange situation arises in which he is almost never praised without being covertly made fun of, or made fun of without being covertly praised. His manic style of commentary—the ecstatic shrieks, the furry-voiced declarations of love, the hysterical crudeness (on Tom Cruise: “If he smelt a soccer jockstrap, he’d faint dead away”), the wild veering across subjects, the metaphors left spattered on the road—is so entirely original that it seems to demand equally extreme interpretations. And so we have the Homer of soccer commentary and the Kevin Keegan of epic poetry hunched behind the same microphone.

What he’s usually praised for is his “enthusiasm,” and it’s true that there’s no denying it; his love for the game has a desperate, sighing quality that gives his excitability an unexpected poignancy (as he might say: He’s as jumpy as a kite in a lightning storm, but, Paolo and Francesca-like, he makes the wind passionate). What I like about him, though, isn’t his enthusiasm so much as a byproduct of his enthusiasm: his apparent determination to purge cliche from sports commentary. Whatever bizarre leaps he makes in the course of a game, he almost never retreats to the safe familiar phrases that make up the background hum of so many match broadcasts. He tries to find his own language to describe what he’s seen.

And because the game presses on him so urgently, he sets an impossible standard for himself—he once said that to do justice to his feeling he’d have to “invent a new language in English”—and uses all his resources to try to reach it, even if doing so occasionally makes him look foolish. (This is a tension that’s captured very well in the numerous blogs, some of them excellent, that are devoted to transcribing his sayings.) There’s a selflessness and an artistry to this that sometimes leads him to inspired descriptions (Barcelona as “dynamic, adroit, clever, waspish, cheeky and zippy”), and even when it lets him down (a random cry of “How do you like those potatoes!”) you suspect that, first, he has to be willing to risk a ridiculous statement in order to find a brilliant one, and second, in the renunciation of cliche the effort is sometimes as important as the result.

What I don’t like about him is that he dominates every match he covers, and frequently seems not to enhance the game so much as wage some titanic parallel struggle that doesn’t have all that much to do with it. You’re never just watching Sevilla-Valencia with match commentary; you’re watching Sevilla-Valencia with Ray Hudson falling like a xylophone hammer all over your consciousness. That can be a good morning in itself, but it can also feel like something you have to contend with, especially when you’re just looking for a transparent experience of an exciting game.

His manner, that is to say, is a distraction as often as an asset: that voice, like a school of sardines pouring through a sluice grate; that relentless flow of undifferentiated metaphor (does it really help to hear that a defender who was rooted to the spot was rooted there “ficus-tree-like”?); that nervous patter, like ceaselessly drumming fingers. There are times when you can love the mission but hate that it’s headquartered in your living room, and while there are many announcers I like much less than Ray Hudson, it sometimes happens that I would rather listen to any of them than to him, which is simply the cost of his style.

But lodging a tepid style complaint against Ray Hudson is like using a caterpillar to block a runaway stage coach, and I’m more or less glad that it is. As unhinged as he may be, as insufficient to his own ends, as imposing on his listeners, he’s still unique among soccer commentators, not merely for his distinctive approach but also in the sheer fact of being unique. The game needs more characters and crazed metaphors, not fewer, and I’ll gladly let Ray Hudson get on my nerves now and then in return for the one moment when he howls like King Lear and suddenly makes a sport I’ve watched a thousand times feel, unnervingly and hilariously, like something I’ve never seen.

The Tuesday Portrait: Ray Hudson

No no no no…can’t think poetically of Hudson, Ray Hudson? This is like Richard Strauss trying to emote a spoon through a symphony — it’s can be done, and now your wax wings are melting Brian.

He’s like those gajillion monkeys with the typewriters, plugging away waiting for poetry to spring forth. He made me suffer through La Liga, so much so I watch it on Justin TV to avoid the headaches. No no no no…

To wildly speculate based on the clip linked to above and the couple on Hudsonia I looked at, he seems to have taken his cue from fellow Geordie Sid Waddell, except slightly less knowing (has he got to the stage yet where he is all too aware of the attention he draws?).

The Riquelme stuff was strangely moving, but that may have been as much due to it being Riquelme (this decade’s Roberto Baggio: the under-appreciated genius most famous for missing a penalty). I’m happy knowing that someone like Hudson exists but I’m not sure I could take it for an entire game – perhaps YouTube compilations are the best medium for his style.

You’ve convinced me on the Hudson-Waddell affinity, even though it sounds like a mid-70s mustache-rock band, or maybe a theory about quarks.

Ray doesn’t seem to have gotten quite as knowing as Sid—he’s only been in the booth a few years. But my impression is that Sid is more of a showman (you’d have to be, covering darts) while Ray is a genuine rhapsode, which might protect him from self-parody as his cult continues to grow. Or it might not, depending on how much stamina he has for his own inspiration. Anyway, his performances are already so exaggerated that exaggerating them further to please an audience might actually knock him unconscious, which would put an end to the question.

I refuse to watch anyone else cover Riquelme’s games. He may be ridiculous 98.5% of the time, but like you said, he blasts most cliches out of the water, and I actually remember what he says about games.

I like your point about Ray wanting to purge cliche from football commentary. Watching the EPL coverage with the Brit commentators and “color commentary” from ex-footballers or managers you get sick and tired of hearing the same old hoary phrases: “whipped in with pace”; “it’s end to end stuff”; “he doesn’t miss them from there”;

The only EPL commentator worth listening to and not trying to ignore is Alan Parry, who actually speaks real English in complete sentences. Compare his diction to the mumbling but bafflingly highly paid Martin Tyler, for example. While the only “color commentator” who doesn’t constantly resort to cliche and who actually provides meaningful insight into games is David Pleat. I cannot understand why the tv companies can’t find more people like Pleat, a real scholar of the game, or our beloved Ray, a scholar of commentary.

he howls like King Lear and suddenly makes a sport I’ve watched a thousand times feel, unnervingly and hilariously, like something I’ve never seen.

…captures my feelings perfectly. Would that he — or GolTV — had a wider audience. As it is, if Ray is announcing, I want to listen because you just never, N-E-V-E-R, know what he’s going to say and when. Ray is just plain fun, and when it comes down to it, what’s better than that in a sport?

I find him, as a fellow Brit, an absolute embarrassment. He sounds like he’s on the verge of tears most of the time, in fact if I find out he’s covering a game it instantly goes off.

Spouting out ridiculous metaphors does not a genius make.

All I want from a commentator is a basic summary of the game and the occasional relevant fact/statistic. I want to focus on the action on the pitch, not constantly suffer the inane personality of the guy covering it.

I wish there was a crowd sound only option – like Sky provide in the UK.

I don’t have a problem with what Ray has to say or his use of unusual metaphors but does he have to be so persistently overbearing? slow down sometimes. Nobody likes being yelled at for 90 min even if they interested in or agree with what you have to say.

Personally I ‘m more appreciative of his observations, sensibilities and judgments than the mundane rhetoric of Andy Gray.

Andy Gray is nothing to Ray. I turn off games (except Barcelona, and when isn’t he commentating on them?) if Ray doesn’t do them. He and Phil are an excellent combination and he makes me day, bringing a smile even when I really don’t want to. I’ll take him to the regular boring Brits any day. He’s often entertaining enough to make even the dullest game worth watching. And he’s certainly not bothered with being “neutral.” While I can see that would be a problem with most people, I find it refreshing. Besides, I’m a Barca fan, so it’s hard not to like him.

This is good bit about someone that I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about….I always find him entertaining, sometimes profoundly insightful, but am sometimes confused by his choice of metahphor (I understand them, of course, but don’t always find them succinct).
Either way, in America one of our most highly regarded of sports commentators is John Madden who is not lacking in love for his game, but is also an absolute fool when it comes to metaphor or even making good, worthwhile comments. He is the king of the obvious, which is why I would take Ray’s dirges anyday…even if he were commenting on American football, and knew nothing about it.
ps even though it was a bit strange the comments on Tom Cruise were HILARIOUS!!

since i tend to watch soccer because my husband watches it, i absolutely love listening to ray hudson commentate. we follow nascar and baseball also so ray’s commentary style is very refreshing from what we hear while watching other sports. i always prefer to have ray commentating a soccer game because he does come up with some very interesting phrases and makes it much more fun. of course, i’m not a serious soccer fan so my point of view is a tad different than y’alls. we have both gol tv, sentanta and another soccer channel thru directv so i do hear various commentators with their different styles, his is the most fun.